blogging

Want to be famous and trendy on the Internet? Join the personal publishing era – get blogging.

Weblogs are part scrapbook, part magazine, part journal, part soapbox, part obligation and part fantasy. Anything that can be typed on a computer keyboard or made into a digital file (images, sounds and scanned items) can be part of a weblog. People (bloggers) with a scanner or digital camera can include pictures of themselves and the objects they write about. Links to other websites are what really make a weblog a digital twist to the old fashioned scrapbook. The best weblogs are those with well-written journal content, interesting links and an eye catching design.

However, don’t get the idea that weblogs (blogs) are just another personal home page. News and commercial sites use them too. Blogging software makes updating simple and quick. Just open the program, add your content and click. Automatically the software puts your entry into HTML, sets up the navigation (layout, date, etc.), and publishes it to your website.

Some blog software will have more features. Movable Type is very popular but not simple to install. Blogger.com is simple but (has been) unreliable due to high use. As a new blogger, you need something easy to use with dependable technical support. Almost all blog software is free for personal use.

There is a group online called GTA Bloggers, for people with weblogs in the Toronto area. Join the email list or read the website if you need help, inspiration, ideas or just want to chat with other bloggers. I also found a webring for Ontario bloggers. Take a look online for blogging groups in your own area.

NationStates is a free nation simulation game. Build a nation and run it according to your own warped political ideals. Create a Utopian paradise for society’s less fortunate or a totalitarian corporate police state. Care for your people or deliberately oppress them. Join the United Nations or remain a rogue state. It’s really up to you. Inspired by the novel: Jennifer Government by Max Barry.

You are the housewife feminist. You aren’t very philosophical or political, but rather personal and practical. Housewife feminists feel there is no need to drastically restructure society or government in order to help women. You tend to feel that individuals can make their own lives better, and restructuring society is either pointless or too extreme to achieve these goals. You are also a very moral type of person, and tend to see the plight of women through a moral lens, not wanting to oppress others in woman’s attempt to relieve their oppression. You also tend to see men and women as being very different from each other, and certainly not as equals. Some housewife feminists will even see women as superior to men because they have better qualities, such as more compassion. Normally, you would probably be classified as the “Cultural” feminist, because you emphasize the differences between men and women, tend to lack political motivation, and are not concerned with sexual liberation. I have called this position the housewife feminist, however, because someone in this category could easily be confused with a ’50s housewife–simple, non-political, accepting gender roles, holding traditional moral values, and having little sexual liberation. However, it is important to note that this does not mean the housewife feminist isn’t concerned with the women’s movement. Rather, they are concerned for women as individuals and see the radical philosophies of other feminists as impractical or misguided. You resemble a ’50s housewife on the surface, but beneath the exterior beats the heart of a true feminist.

So Quiet This Weekend

Kind of spooky. Like I wandered into one of those end of the world movies. Everyone has been evaporated from the planet but me. I’m left to wander around, which is pretty ok with me, alone going anywhere I please. Imagine all the stuff you could do. Banks and such wouldn’t matter, if your first thoughts went to amassing cash. Everything would be free for the taking. Haul away as much stuff as you can carry. I’d gather food, canned and jarred stuff like pickles (I especially love dill pickles). Then I’d pick out a place I really want to live, maybe two even. One in the city and one in the middle of nowhere, by the water.

What would you do if you woke up one morning and found you were the last person left on the planet? Possibly there are others but it could take you a lifetime (or a great amount of luck or skil) to find them.

I think it would be fun. Eventually I would miss having someone to talk to, I guess. I could always get a lot of blow up dolls from some adult store and have instant company. They’d be really quiet and not much help but at least they’d keep out of my way and not want to share any of my supplies.

I think I’d miss things like radio, TV and the Internet more than I’d miss having actual real people, physically there. They say you would go crazy being alone for a long time. I wonder… Even if I did go crazy I doubt I’d actually notice a huge difference in myself. I already talk to myself. I already talk to inanimate objects. There are times when I answer myself in these conversations. So, really, how would I know I was crazy? Maybe I’d imagine someone and they could tell me.

You never know…

For now, I’m missing Skye. Did she try to sneak away from her blog? Doesn’t she know about the blogging contract? How silly of her not to read the fine print. 😉

You’re an expressive, offbeat blogger who tends to write about anything and everything.You tend to set blogging trends, and you’re the most likely to write your own meme or survey.You are a bit distant though. Your blog is all about you – not what anyone else has to say.

First, the Blog Mavens, providing a road map to the blogosphere. Beginner blogger training started November 10th. Not sure what they would teach but I know people who would benefit from a little CSS and confidence in their blogging empire.

Secondly, Heather and Becki work on Virtual Assistant Training too. If nothing else, beginners don’t have to start out feeling completely at sea. Of course, you do still have to get your own clients and do all that self promotion. No one can do that for you, better than you.

Is your life enough of a soap opera or do you embellish it for your blog? Admit it… you’ve played with a few details, added an inch or taken a mile, here and there. It’s all for the cause of the readable blog. We all want readers, feedback, numbers on our traffic counters. Being human is human.

What if you traded in the whole truth thing and went for the complete fiction. I’ve read blogs that were blatantly fiction. Unashamed to be totally inspired rather than perspired. Is it bad? Is it wrong? Why do you care! It’s a blog, not life and death. Have fun, take it as far as you can and see what happens. Experiment and explore and live the fantasy in text.

How far would you go, if you could go? Toss out the politically correct, the inbred values and do anything and everything. What comes to mind first? What taboo will you plunge into? No need to think twice, if you’re timid about it go for the anonymous blog. After all, do you really want to meet anyone who would read the stuff you plan to write?